Meet the Makers – Sue Hodder, Wynns Coonawarra Estate Part 1
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THE REAL DEAL
For dyed-in-the-wool urbanites like WineDown, having a meaningful connection with the earth usually means we’ve just fallen over. But for Sue Hodder – esteemed senior winemaker at Wynns Coonawarra Estate – connection to the earth is a profound and life-long interaction with the land – its animals, plants, and seasons. It’s central not only to her work, but to her life, and her worldview.
City-slicker met self-confessed small-town-lover recently via an early morning video hook-up. (8:30am – that’s early, right?) With her trademark shoulder-length brunette bob and flash of red lippie, Hodder is looking fabulous, irrespective of the hour. WineDown makes a mental note to try harder for vid-meetings.
Sue reports that it’s a freezingly cold morning in Coonawarra, and that they’d had a hailstorm the evening before. In Sydney, it’s an outrageous (for August) 27 degrees...
WD: Crikey – you’ve had hail; we’re having a heatwave. Does this mean what I think it means?
SH: Climate change. You can’t avoid it. It has definitely got warmer, but we’re fortunate here at Coonawarra – we’re not cooking hot, and we’re better placed naturally to handle climate change than most.
WD: How so?
SH: Well, Coonawarra was probably at the cooler end of things thirty-odd years ago...
Hodder isn't guessing about this, she knows. Next year marks her 30th anniversary at Wynns.
SH: ...so a slight increase isn’t quite as much of a problem for us as it is for some of the warmer regions. And we do generally get reliable rainfall.
WD: But it isn’t just about an inexorable slide into warmer weather, is it? What about those unpredictable weather events?
SH: Yes, last night’s hail was a shock. Thank heavens we haven’t had budburst yet.
WD: What can you possibly do, as a winemaker, to mitigate?
SH: Well, we work very closely with the Bureau of Meteorology, so we get weather reports and predictions in far more detail than you would just on the evening weather – and it's very specific to this region. Then we work out different techniques to alleviate the extreme heat or cold or whatever. And of course, whenever we do any new plantings, we make sure they’re adapted for the warmer conditions. You do what you can. But as you say, there’s no controlling it.
WD: Just one of the many things that are out of our control at the moment. But let’s not go down that path...
We’re already covering the BIG ISSUES and WineDown still hasn’t done the introductions...
WD: Sue Hodder, welcome to WineDown! Thank you for agreeing to do this interview – it’s a real honour to be talking to you.
SH: No, the honour’s mine. I’ve always loved WineDown, and the fantastic way that it...
The only aircraft to enter Sydney airspace during the entire month of August roars overhead.
SH: ...but I’m sure you’ve heard all that before.
WD: Um. Possibly. But anyway, we’re here to talk about you! You grew up in Alice Springs. What was the Hodder family doing in the Alice?
SH: Mum was a teacher with School of the Air, and Dad worked with the CSIRO.
WD: Crikey. How many Aussie icons can you cram into one childhood?
SH: It didn’t feel iconic. But it was fun. The 60s and 70s were really an amazing time to be in Alice. The tourism boom... Indigenous politics finding its feet... government services ramping up... and the burgeoning beef industry. The town pretty much trebled in size during that time. Oh – and Pine Gap of course – which brought hundreds of Americans into the mix too. It’s easy to sugar-coat things when you look back, but for a kid, it was great. There was a lot of space. And there were horses...
WD: What did young Sue Hodder want to do when she grew up?
SH: Something to do with animals or farming... horses or cattle. So, I decided to go to Roseworthy.
WD: I always equate Roseworthy with wine – but actually, it was an Agricultural College, wasn’t it?
SH: Yes – and that’s why I was there! I just loved the land and the animals and the seasons and plants. And yeah, of course wine is part of that, but I was an AGGY!
WD: As opposed to...?
SH: A PLONKY!!!
Plonkies. The wine students. WineDown is fairly sure which camp sounds more fun. Hodder confirms this suspicion.
WD: So, if you graduated as an AGGY, how did you come to wine?
SH: Well... after graduating, I scored a job with Penfolds. They’d just come into possession of the Kaiser Stuhl cooperative vineyards in Barossa and needed to better understand their acquisition. My job was to assess the vineyards and talk to the growers. It was a fantastic job – all these lovely growers... you’d go there to look at the vineyard, and next thing you're in having a cup of tea and some German cake. And you leave with fruit and home-made jam...
WD: It sounds fabulous. But it’s still not winemaking. What happened next?
SH: I did the Europe thing.
WD: The standard rite of passage for young Aussies in the 70s or 80s...
SH: Yep. A suitcase, a Eurail pass, and a dog-eared Let’s Go: Europe guidebook. I picked grapes in Bordeaux and checked out a few European vineyards – and their products – before winding up in London in ’85 – where I worked in Oddbins in South Kensington.
WD: Was that when Aussie wines were really taking off in England?
SH: Not really – that came a bit later. We ranged exactly two Australian wines at Oddbins – a Rosemount Chardonnay and a Brown Bros Shiraz Mondeuse, I think... But it was enormous fun.
After a bit more travel, including a vintage stint at Fetzer in Mendocino County, California, Hodder returned to Australia to enrol at Roseworthy for her Graduate Diploma in Wine.
WD: Where did you have your lightbulb moment about becoming a winemaker?
SH: I’m not sure that I ever had one! Fetzer certainly gave me lots of responsibility, and lots of opportunities, but really, when I came back to Roseworthy, I was still thinking about just looking after vineyards.
WD: OK, so it was more a natural progression than some kind of epiphany... Where did you go after you graduated?
SH: I made sparklings for Penfolds for a while... Seaview and... West Coast Cooler...
Chris Hatcher’s words come flooding back to WineDown: “You’ve gotta start somewhere”.
SH: But I’m really grateful for the early experience with those hugely commercial products. You couldn’t call it creative – it wasn’t creative at all. But I learned to be very organised and very disciplined. It was a great grounding for a young winemaker.
WD: What came next?
SH: Well, a friend of mine – Peter Douglas – was working at Wynns, and they needed a winemaker...
Douglas, one of the true doyens of Coonawarra winemakers, headed up winemaking at Wynns for around 14 years.
SH: It was a good winery, making some excellent wines under heritage label, and it sounded interesting.
Hodder got the gig. Five years later, Douglas left Wynns to pursue other opportunities. In 1998, Sue Hodder was appointed Senior Winemaker at Wynns Coonawarra Estate – the role she continues to occupy today.
Next week:
Part 2: Sue talks History, Heritage, Women and Wynnsday...